16 month old is now waking before 6 am!!!!

[little hero]

Please help...

History:

My daughter is almost sixteen months old.  She has always been a good overnight sleeper.  Typically she sleeps 11 to 12 hours overnight.  She still takes two naps a day (1 1/2 hours each).  She just started walking a week ago.  Sleep problem has been occurring for about 10 days.


In the last 10 days my daughter has decided that she wants to wake up before 6 am.  She doesn't cry for me to come and get her so I let her play in her crib for another hour or so.  I put her to bed at 7:30 pm and she either conks out immediately or is awake for another hour or so just lying in her crib and turning on her dream machine.  How fast she falls asleep doesn't seem to have any correlation to how "busy" she was during the day.

Do I need to employ the method of waking her up at let's say 5 am, changing her diaper and then putting her back to bed again in hopes of having her sleep until 7 or 7:30 am?  Or am I fine with just leaving the situation until she gets to a point of actually wanting to get out of bed at 6 am?

[deckchariot]

Welcome to BW!!!  You'll find loads of help and support here!!

I suspect her EWs are signs of the 2 to 1 nap switch.  Here's a few links to have a read through:  http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=165030.0 and http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=95670.0 (even though your dd is older, this is super helpful in explaining the transition) and http://babywhispererforums.com/index.php?topic=41952.0

There are basically 2 approaches to the switch:
1) keep 1st nap at the same A time every day, but gradually shorten the length of it; at the same time, move pm nap earlier (by the same amount you shorten nap 1).  When nap 1 is <30 min, attempt to cut it out and just have 1 nap.
2) push morning A time later, allow your bub to sleep as long as they want in the am, then do a late pm catnap (can be a shorter A time than in the am, as you don't want them to take a full nap); eventually cut out pm catnap.

If she needs a longer A time before bed, then option #1 is generally better.  If she doesn't and HATES being woken from the am nap, option #2 may be better.  In both cases, you can offer an early bedtime if one/both of the naps is bad.

Whichever approach you choose - it's best to go gradually - so either cut 15 min off the am nap every 3-5 days or lengthen the am A time by 15 min every 3-5 days.  It also is helpful to know about how much day sleep is "optimal" for your dd and how much A time she needs (minimum) between her last nap and bedtime - that can help you plan out the day.

hth
michelle